Journal 3 - Pan's Labyrinth

Mexican producer, writer, director and makeup artist Guillermo del Toro takes the audience for a ride through fantasy and reality in Pan's Labyrinth. In a story about a girl living during the Spanish Civil War, Ofelia looks for an escape in Toro's fantasy land. When Guillermo del Toro tagged up with CafeFX VFX Supervisor Everett Burrell to work on the visual special effects of the film, true magic occurred. Toro is known for his horror movies and his directing of Hellboy and Blade 2, while the CafeFX team has worked with major films such as The Departed and The Aviator.

Pan's Labyrinth through its special effects is able to take a realistic account of the past and bring magical characters into it without viewers getting distracted. It was the fantastically unique characters that sets this film apart from other fantasys. Three faeries that occur in Ofelia's imagination come straight from computer generated animation. Although Animation Lead Ron Friedman noticed an interesting fact about their CG faeries.

“Male artists tended to design fairies that were sloppier in their movements,
sort of slovenly, with their legs spread. Female artists designed fairies who
appeared more proper, always keeping their legs together and perfectly posed.
Ultimately, we selected the female version. And, while we gave each fairy a
unique personality, one being more levelheaded than the other two who are prone
to argue, we kept them poised and pretty."

The giant toad living in the tree was a whole different story. The team at FX guide caught up with CafeFX VFX Supervisor Everett Burrell to have him explain the toad.

"The giant, grotesque (and hungry) toad started out as an animatronic puppet,
which was great looking, but a bit stiff as an actor so we inserted a
completely CG toad, which allowed for much more movement and expression,” says
Burrell.

The stick bug was one of the most fascinating characters because it appeared as real as anything. The cinematography team studied an actual stick bug to understand its movements and make the CG stick bug come alive. In transforming him from a real stick bug to the CG one they took and blended hundreds of still shots. The way Burrell described it to FXguide was,

"Because the director did not want to present the transformation as a simple
overall morph from one target to the next, careful planning of the action and
use of in-house software was utilized to allow the character to transform
different parts of its body over different periods of time—the legs, wings,
hands and body".

Another central character was the mandrake root who started as a live action puppet and became a 3D generation as he developed more and more. The most successful work done an fantasizing a character would have to be Pan. A character made out of the earth was played by Doug Jones who spent 5 hours a day getting this outfit together. The entire costume appears as it did in the movie except the legs were left uncovered. Green screen material covered his legs, and then the team went back and filled in the missing peices with sticks and roots. In summary, this was a fantastically well developed movie in incorparating realism with fantasy. The characters were made up, but seemed believable throughout the movie. Job well done Guillermo del Toro.